This rom-com's love triangle has exactly zero chemistry

The film, which is adapted by Taylor Jenkins Reid (alongside her husband Alex Jenkins Reid) from her novel of the same name, follows a love triangle spanning a couple of decades and a not-actually-dead husband.

While the plot sounds more dramatic than comedic, Liu's character Sam Lee - the high school best friend turned eventual post-mourning fiance - has a more light-hearted arc compared to the other two points of the triangle.

They are Emma (Phillipa Soo, who starred as Eliza in the original Hamilton Broadway cast but sadly has no cause to sing in this film) and Jesse (Aussie Luke Bracey, recently seen in another rom-com fizzer, Maybe I Do), who got together after a high school party and spent the next decade or so travelling the world before eventually marrying.

But when Jesse has an exciting photography opportunity in Alaska and his helicopter goes down (off screen - this film does not have the budget for helicopter crashes, and it shows), he is presumed dead.

The loss seems insurmountable to Emma, who literally stands at the end of a pier in her Southern California town with a pair of binoculars in the hope of seeing Jesse swim back to her. Slowly accepting the reality that her husband is not coming back, she moves back to the family home in Acton, Massachusetts, a quaint New England town, and works at the family business, Blair Books.

In one of the film's few bright sparks, Michaela Conlin (who spent 12 years playing Angela Montenegro on TV procedural Bones and deserves to be in more projects) plays Emma's older sister Marie, and helps her find herself again and guides her to an appreciation of books for the first time.

It's here, back in her hometown, that she runs into Sam for the first time in years and years. He has carried a torch for Emma for all these years and when circumstances bring them together again, it doesn't take long for the pair to take the leap from friends to partners. This backstory is told in flashbacks, because the film pretty much kicks off with Emma receiving a call that Jesse is not dead, right as she's celebrating her engagement with her family.

One True Loves does tick a box in that it doesn't make Sam lash out at Emma because her dead husband is alive again. He's kind, considerate and understanding without being a doormat. He tells Emma to figure out what she wants, to be with her husband and the life she left behind, or to be with him and the life they've built together.

The trouble with all this is that no one has any chemistry. Liu tries his utmost to breathe some life into the performance, but there's nothing that can bring this bomb back from the dead. Most of his role in the film involves sharing his personal life with his enraptured orchestra students, which is a straight-up comedy move, while Emma and Jesse are off pondering life's big questions.

The dialogue is TV movie standard at best and the direction from Andy Fickman (whose varied resume includes gems like early-00s comedy classic She's the Man and duds like You Again and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2) is lacklustre and uninspired.

Perhaps fans of the book will enjoy this film adaptation more, with the benefit of deep characterisations and motivations from the page that aren't evident on screen.